Tuesday, August 25, 2009

- Priming the Pump: Shrimp Pasta

Since I want to bulk up this blog with some content, I'm going to dig out some writing from our Williamsburg days. This recipe is for a must-have-dish when the Ackert clan heads to the Outer Banks each June. It was discovered during a business trip with some fellow librarians to Kohler, Wisconsin, home of the “Toilet Wall of Fame" (aka the Kohler Design Center).

After learning more about bathrooms than we ever needed to know, we tried to find a simple place to eat for dinner and happened on an Italian restaurant in a strip mall. The menu was agreeably low-priced with entrees around eight dollars (this was 20 years ago). We made reservations and returned several hours later dressed in jeans only to find that we were in a high-end bistro with incredible food; everyone else was dressed to the nines. Who knew that Wisconsin restaurants charged one-third as much as Williamsburg restaurants did?

The Shrimp Pasta I ate that night was made with linguine, asparagus, olives, sun-dried tomatoes and prosciutto, along with an abundance of shrimp, cream and parmesan. The recipe that I cobbled together once I returned to Williamsburg has gone through many, many permutations over the years, so whatever ingredients you do or don’t put in, it’s really not possible to mess it up … unless, of course, you use bait shrimp.*

Sun dried tomatoes, cut in small pieces and softened in the heavy cream

Cook the pasta al dente in salted waterPeel and steam the shrimp, cut into bite-sized chunksSimmer and reduce the heavy cream until thick and fragrantAdd half-and-half as needed to keep the cream from over-thickeningPrep additions as desiredMix everything together in a very large bowl ... it doesn't hurt to let it sit and meld for awhile

Well, that's another story. On many of our Outer Banks vacations, Meg was "odd man out" since she was at least three years older than most of the other kids who came bundled with our former college friends and erstwhile co-vacationers. So Meg would bring along a friend of her own to keep her company. One year, not sure she wanted to join us for a meal of steamers (soft shelled clams), Meg's friend Jessica opted for some steamed shrimp instead. Not knowing that someone had stashed bait shrimp in the fridge, we didn't give any credence to the kids' table comments about the "really little shrimp" that Jessica was diligently trying to peel. It was only after dinner that we discovered the regular shrimp still sitting in the fridge and the bait shrimp nowhere to be found. Jessica survived to tell the tale, and is now happily married and a proud parent in her own right.

It's a long way from Williamsburg, Virginia to the Texas Hill Country, but I've never looked back. Instead, my days are full of stitching, natural dyeing, assemblage art appreciation, grandparenting, cactus whacking, Americana music and Tex-Mex cooking ... not to mention wildflowers and critters.
As local bard Robert Earl Keen says, "The road goes on forever & the party never ends."